The Collapse of Republican Seriousness

On Constitutional Memory, Judicial Threats, and the Disintegration of Civic Responsibility

Few moments better illustrate the GOP's descent into constitutional incoherence than Senator John Curtis's appearance on Meet the Press this weekend. In a display of breathtaking historical illiteracy wrapped in pseudo-constitutional rhetoric, Curtis characterized President Trump's threats to impeach a federal judge who ruled against his deportation orders as—wait for it—“what our founders intended.”

This statement deserves to be examined not merely as one senator's gaffe but as a window into the complete collapse of serious thought within a once-substantive political movement.

Let's be clear about what Curtis is defending: The President has threatened to impeach a federal judge for ruling against mass deportations conducted under a 1798 law originally designed for wartime, where people identified as “gang members” (with no due process or verification) are being shipped to El Salvador and subjected to treatment that would violate the Eighth Amendment if conducted on American soil.

When asked directly if presidential threats to impeach judges who rule against him are appropriate, Curtis offers this profile in courage: “I would never be the one to say to the President what he can say, what he can't say.” This isn't constitutional deference—it's constitutional surrender.

The founders didn't establish three co-equal branches of government so that two of them could simply acquiesce to the third. They didn't design independent courts so presidents could threaten to remove judges who check executive power. The tension they envisioned wasn't the tension between bullying and capitulation; it was the productive tension of balanced powers where each branch maintains its independence and dignity. The erosion of judicial independence isn't a theoretical risk—it's the textbook definition of a constitutional crisis.

But Curtis's remarks aren't just historically illiterate—they reflect a broader collapse of interpretive seriousness on the right.

Curtis's performance exemplifies precisely the false neutrality I've previously identified in figures like Jason Calacanis—the “calling balls and strikes” approach to political commentary. This baseball metaphor perfectly captures the vapidity of Curtis's stance. As I've argued before, this pretense of neutrality fundamentally misunderstands how constitutional judgment works. The strike zone in baseball is arbitrary—it could be larger or smaller, there could be five strikes instead of three—but the rules appear natural and objective once established.

The same applies to Curtis's constitutional analysis. He pretends to stand in some neutral position of judgment while accepting the rules as defined by a president who threatens democratic institutions. He applies a faux objectivity that ignores context and history, pretending each presidential action can be evaluated in isolation from the pattern it forms.

This is the intellectual fraud at the heart of the “balls and strikes” approach. It ignores that democratic institutions don't reset each day like a new baseball game—they carry the weight of precedent, tradition, and accumulated damage or strength. Constitutional judgment requires historical memory, not intentional amnesia.

When I challenged the National Review's Dan McLaughlin on his framework for justifying executive defiance of court orders, he responded with procedural pedantry rather than addressing the substance of the critique. His technical correction that “the executive branch cannot impeach anybody” deliberately missed the point—when Trump and his allies threaten to impeach judges who rule against them, they're not making a technical claim about constitutional procedures. They're signaling that judicial independence will not be tolerated. Curtis now echoes the same constitutional carelessness McLaughlin defended—normalizing executive threats under the guise of procedural order.

Curtis's invocation of the founders isn't just wrong—it's the precise opposite of what they intended. The founders were deeply concerned with preventing exactly the type of authoritarian overreach we're witnessing. They had just fought a revolution against an executive who claimed powers beyond constraint. The idea that they would view presidential threats against an independent judiciary as a healthy “civics lesson” rather than a constitutional crisis is absurd on its face.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And when a United States Senator characterizes threats to the independent judiciary as
“what our founders intended,” we are witnessing not a difference in constitutional interpretation but a complete abandonment of constitutional literacy. If this is what passes for civic education in 2025, we are living in a republic in name only.

The real “civics lesson” here is how quickly democratic institutions crumble when those entrusted with defending them choose partisan loyalty over their constitutional obligations. It's how easily the language of constitutionalism can be weaponized against constitutional values themselves. What Curtis calls “tension between the three different branches,” the founders would have recognized as the early stages of constitutional breakdown.

The tragedy is not that Curtis doesn't understand this distinction—it's that he likely does, yet chooses to present constitutional subversion as constitutional health. This isn't just unserious; it's destructive to the very system he claims to be defending.

And that, Senator Curtis, is actually what our founders feared.

“A constitution of government once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” — John Adams